A California 'Midsummer Night's Dream'

Joining a distinguished list of predecessors who’ve re-imagined Shakespeare’s work, in his third novel, Chris Adrian, one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40,” offers a contemporary version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, set in San Francisco’s Buena Vista Park. It’s a lively, bawdy and at times perplexing tale that pulsates between fantasy and reality...

Publisher comments on 'A Better Angel'

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book A San Antonio Express Best Book of the year In this inventive collection of stories, Chris Adrian treads the terrain of human suffering—illness, regret, mourning, sympathy—in the most unusual ways. A bereaved twin starts a friendship with a homicidal fifth grader in the hope that she can somehow lead him back to his dead brother. A...

Ever since Chris Adrian's acclaimed short story "Every Night for a Thousand Years" appeared in the New Yorker in 1997, readers have waited for the release of the author's first novel. In Gob's Grief, their wait is rewarded with a visionary book that builds on the Civil War-era story first introduced some four years earlier. In the original tale, American poet Walt Whitman...